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Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2

T >> Thomas Moore >> Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2




In alluding to Lord Melville's appointment to the Admiralty; he says,--

"But then, I am told, there is the First Lord of the Admiralty,--'Do you
forget the leader of the grand Catamaran project? Are you not aware of
the important change in that department, and the advantage the country is
likely to derive from that change?' Why, I answer, that I do not know of
any peculiar qualifications the Noble Lord has to preside over the
Admiralty; but I do know, that if I were to judge of him from the kind of
capacity he evinced while Minister of War, I should entertain little
hopes of him. If, however, the Right Honorable Gentleman should say to
me, 'Where else would you put that Noble Lord, would you have him
appointed War-Minister again?' I should say, Oh no, by no means,--I
remember too well the expeditions to Toulon, to Quiberon, to Corsica, and
to Holland, the responsibility for each of which the Noble Lord took on
himself, entirely releasing from any responsibility the Commander in
Chief and the Secretary at War. I also remember that, which, although so
glorious to our arms in the result, I still shall call a most
unwarrantable project.--the expedition to Egypt. It may be said, that as
the Noble Lord was so unfit for the military department, the naval was
the proper place for him. Perhaps there wore people who would adopt this
whimsical reasoning. I remember a story told respecting Mr. Garrick, who
was once applied to by an eccentric Scotchman, to introduce a production
of his on the stage. This Scotchman was such a good-humored fellow, that
he was called 'Honest Johnny M'Cree.' Johnny wrote four acts of a
tragedy, which he showed to Mr. Garrick, who dissuaded him from finishing
it; telling him that his talent did not lie that way; so Johnny abandoned
the tragedy, and set about writing a comedy. When this was finished, he
showed it to Mr. Garrick, who found it to be still more exceptionable
than the tragedy, and of course could not be persuaded to bring it
forward on the stage. This surprised poor Johnny, and he remonstrated.
'Nay, now, David, (said Johnny,) did you not tell me my talents did not
lie in tragedy?'--'Yes, (replied Garrick,) but I did not tell you that
they lay in comedy.'--'Then, (exclaimed Johnny,) gin they dinna lie
there, where the de'il dittha lie, mon?' Unless the Noble Lord at the
head of the Admiralty has the same reasoning in his mind as Johnny
M'Cree, he cannot possibly suppose that his incapacity for the direction
of the War-department necessarily qualifies him for the Presidency of the
Naval. Perhaps, if the Noble Lord be told that he has no talents for the
latter, His Lordship may exclaim with honest Johnny M'Cree, 'Gin they
dinna lie there, where the de'il dittha lie, mon?'"

On the 10th of May, the claims of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, were,
for the first time, brought under the notice of the Imperial Parliament,
by Lord Grenville in the House of Lords, and by Mr. Fox in the House of
Commons. A few days before the debate, as appears, by the following
remarkable letter, Mr. Sheridan was made the medium of a communication
from Carlton House, the object of which was to prevent Mr. Fox from
presenting the Petition.

"DEAR SHERIDAN,

"I did not receive your letter till last night.

"I did, on Thursday, consent to be the presenter of the Catholic
Petition, at the request of the Delegates, and had further conversation
on the subject with them at Lord Grenville's yesterday morning. Lord
Grenville also consented to present the Petition to the House of Lords.
Now, therefore, any discussion on this part of the subject would be too
late; but I will fairly own, that, if it were not, I could not be
dissuaded from doing the public act, which, of all others, it will give
me the greatest satisfaction and pride to perform. No past event in my
political life ever did, and no future one ever can, give me such
pleasure.

"I am sure you know how painful it would be to me to disobey any command
of His Royal Highness's, or even to act in any manner that might be in
the slightest degree contrary to his wishes, and therefore I am not sorry
that your intimation came too late. I shall endeavor to see the Prince
today; but, if I should fail, pray take care that he knows how things
stand before we meet at dinner, lest any conversation there should appear
to come upon him by surprise.

"Yours ever,

_"Arlington Street, Sunday,_

"C. J. F."

It would be rash, without some further insight into the circumstances of
this singular interference, to enter into any speculations with respect
to its nature or motives, or to pronounce how far Mr. Sheridan was
justified in being the instrument of it. But on the share of Mr. Fox in
the transaction, such suspension of opinion is unnecessary. We have here
his simple and honest words before us,--and they breathe a spirit of
sincerity from which even Princes might take a lesson with advantage.

Mr. Pitt was not long in discovering that place does not always imply
Power, and that in separating himself from the other able men of the day,
he had but created an Opposition as much too strong for the Government,
as the Government itself was too weak for the country. The humiliating
resource to which he was driven, in trying, as a tonic, the reluctant
alliance of Lord Sidmouth,--the abortiveness of his efforts to avert the
full of his old friend, Lord Melville, and the fatality of ill luck that
still attended his exertions against France,--all concurred to render this
reign of the once powerful Minister a series of humiliations, shifts, and
disasters, unlike his former proud period in every thing but ill success.
The powerful Coalition opposed to him already had a prospect of carrying
by storm the post which he occupied, when, by his death, it was
surrendered, without parley, into their hands.

The Administration that succeeded, under the auspices of Lord Greville
and Mr. Fox, bore a resemblance to the celebrated Brass of Corinth, more,
perhaps, in the variety of the metals brought together, than in the
perfection of the compound that resulted from their fusion. [Footnote:
See in the Annual Register of 1806, some able remarks upon Coalitions in
general, as well as a temperate defence of this Coalition in
particular,--for which that work is, I suspect, indebted to a hand such as
has not often, since the time of Burke, enriched its pages.] There were
comprised in it, indeed, not only the two great parties of the leading
chiefs, but those Whigs who differed with them both under the Addington
Ministry, and the Addingtons that differed with them all on the subject
of the Catholic claims. With this last anomalous addition to the
miscellany the influence of Sheridan is mainly chargeable. Having, for
some time past, exerted all his powers of management to bring about a
coalition between Carlton-House and Lord Sidmouth, he had been at length
so successful, that upon the formation of the present Ministry, it was
the express desire of the Prince that Lord Sidmouth should constitute a
part of it. To the same unlucky influence, too, is to be traced the very
questionable measure, (notwithstanding the great learning and ability
with which it was defended,) of introducing the Chief Justice, Lord
Ellenborough, into the Cabinet.

As to Sheridan's own share in the arrangements, it was, no doubt,
expected by him that he should now be included among the members of the
Cabinet; and it is probable that Mr. Fox, at the head of a purely Whig
ministry, would have so far considered the services of his ancient ally,
and the popularity still attached to his name through the country, as to
confer upon him this mark of distinction and confidence. But there were
other interests to be consulted;--and the undisguised earnestness with
which Sheridan had opposed the union of his party with the Grenvilles,
left him but little supererogation of services to expect in that quarter.
Some of his nearest friends, and particularly Mrs. Sheridan, entreated,
as I understand, in the most anxious manner, that he would not accept any
such office as that of Treasurer of the Navy, for the responsibility and
business of which they knew his habits so wholly unfitted him,--but that,
if excluded by his colleagues from the distinction of a seat in the
Cabinet, he should decline all office whatsoever, and take his chance in
a friendly independence of them. But the time was now past when he could
afford to adopt this policy,--the emoluments of a place were too
necessary to him to be rejected;--and, in accepting the same office that
had been allotted to him in the Regency--arrangements of 1789, he must
have felt, with no small degree of mortification, how stationary all his
efforts since then had left him, and what a blank was thus made of all
his services in the interval.

The period of this Ministry, connected with the name of Mr. Fox, though
brief, and in some respects, far from laudable, was distinguished by two
measures,--the Plan of Limited Service, and the Resolution for the
Abolition of the Slave-Trade,--which will long be remembered to the honor
of those concerned in them. The motion of Mr. Fox against the Slave-Trade
was the last he ever made in Parliament;--and the same sort of melancholy
admiration that Pliny expressed, in speaking of a beautiful picture, the
painter of which had died in finishing it,--"dolor manas dum id ageret,
abreptae"--comes naturally over our hearts in thinking of the last,
glorious work, to which this illustrious statesman, in dying, set his
hand.

Though it is not true, as has been asserted, that Mr. Fox refused to see
Sheridan in his last illness, it is but too certain that those
appearances of alienation or reserve, which had been for some time past
observable in the former, continued to throw a restraint over their
intercourse with each other to the last. It is a proof, however, of the
absence of any serious grounds for this distrust, that Sheridan as the
person selected by the relatives of Mr. Fox to preside over and direct
the arrangements of the funeral, and that he put the last, solemn seal to
their long intimacy, by following his friend, as mourner, to the grave.

The honor of representing the city of Westminster in Parliament had been,
for some time, one of the dreams of Sheridan's ambition. It was
suspected, indeed,--I know not with what justice,--that in advising Mr.
Fox, as he is said to have done, about the year 1800, to secede from
public life altogether, he was actuated by a wish to succeed him in the
representation of Westminster, and had even already set on foot some
private negotiations towards that object. Whatever grounds there may have
been for this suspicion, the strong wish that he felt on the subject had
long been sufficiently known to his colleagues; and on the death of Mr.
Fox, it appeared, not only to himself, but the public, that he was the
person naturally pointed out as most fit to be his parliamentary
successor. It was, therefore, with no slight degree of disappointment he
discovered, that the ascendancy of Aristocratic influence was, as usual,
to prevail, and that the young son of the Duke of Northumberland would be
supported by the Government in preference to him, It is but right,
however, in justice to the Ministry, to state, that the neglect with
which they appear to have treated him on this occasion,--particularly in
not apprising him of their decision in favor of Lord Percy, sufficiently
early to save him from the humiliation of a fruitless attempt,--is
proved, by the following letters, to have originated in a double
misapprehension, by which, while Sheridan, on one side, was led to
believe that the Ministers would favor his pretensions, the Ministers, on
the other, were induced to think that he had given up all intentions of
being a candidate.

The first letter is addressed to the gentleman, (one of Sheridan's
intimate friends,) who seems to have been, unintentionally, the cause of
the mistake on both sides.

"DEAR ----,

"_Somerset-Place, September 14._

"You must have seen by my manner, yesterday, how much I was surprised and
hurt at learning, for the first time, that Lord Grenville had, many days
previous to Mr. Fox's death, decided to support Lord Percy on the
expected vacancy for Westminster, and that you had since been the active
agent in the canvass actually commenced. I do not like to think I have
grounds to complain or change my opinion of any friend, without being
very explicit, and opening my mind, without reserve, on such a subject. I
must frankly declare, that I think you have brought yourself and me into
a very unpleasant dilemma. You seemed to say, last night, that you had
not been apprised of my intention to offer for Westminster on the
apprehended vacancy. I am confident you have acted under that impression;
but I must impute to you either great inattention to what fell from me in
our last conversation on the subject, or great inaccuracy of
recollection; for I solemnly protest I considered you as the individual
most distinctly apprised, that at this moment to succeed that great man
and revered friend in Westminster, should the fatal event take place,
would be the highest object of my ambition; for, in that conversation I
thanked you expressly for informing me that Lord Grenville had said to
yourself, upon Lord Percy being suggested to him, that he, Lord
Grenville, '_would decide on nothing until Mr. Sheridan had been spoken
to, and his intentions known_' or words precisely to that effect. I
expressed my grateful sense of Lord Grenville's attention, and said, that
it would confirm me in my intention of making no application, however
hopeless myself respecting Mr. Fox, while life remained with him,--and
these words of Lord Grenville you allowed last night to have been so
stated to me, though not as a message from His Lordship. Since that time
I think we have not happened to meet; at least sure I am, we have had no
conversation on the subject. Having the highest opinion of Lord
Grenville's honor and sincerity, I must be confident that he must have
had another impression made on his mind respecting my wishes before I was
entirely passed by. I do not mean to say that my offering myself was
immediately to entitle me to the support of Government, but I do mean to
say, that my pretensions were entitled to consideration before that
support was offered to another without the slightest notice taken of
me,--the more especially as the words of Lord Grenville, reported by you
to me, had been stated by me to many friends as my reliance and
justification in not following their advice by making a direct
application to Government. I pledged myself to them that Lord Grenville
would not promise the support of Government till my intentions had been
asked, and I quoted your authority for doing so: I never heard a syllable
of that support being promised to Lord Percy until from you on the
evening of Mr. Fox's death. Did I ever authorize you to inform Lord
Grenville that I had abandoned the idea of offering myself? These are
points which it is necessary, for the honor of all parties, should be
amicably explained. I therefore propose, as the shortest way of effecting
it,--wishing you not to consider this letter as in any degree
confidential,--that my statements in this letter may be submitted to any
two common friends, or to the Lord Chancellor alone, and let it be
ascertained where the error has arisen, for error is all I complain of;
and, with regard to Lord Grenville, I desire distinctly to say, that I
feel myself indebted for the fairness and kindness of his intentions
towards me. My disappointment of the protection of Government may be a
sufficient excuse to the friends I am pledged to, should I retire; but I
must have it understood whether or not I deceived them, when I led them
to expect that I should have that support.

"I hope to remain ever yours sincerely,

"R. B. SHERIDAN.

"The sooner the reference I propose the better."

The second letter, which is still further explanatory of the
misconception, was addressed by Sheridan to Lord Grenville:

"MY DEAR LORD,

"Since I had the honor of Your Lordship's letter, I have received one
from Mr. ----, in which, I am sorry to observe he is silent as to my offer
of meeting, in the presence of a third person, in order to ascertain
whether he did or not so report a conversation with Your Lordship as to
impress on my mind a belief that my pretensions would be considered,
before the support of Government should be pledged elsewhere. Instead of
this, he not only does not admit the precise words quoted by me, but does
not state what he allows he did say. If he denies that he ever gave me
reason to adopt the belief I have stated, be it so; but the only
stipulation I have made is that we should come to an explicit
understanding on this subject,--not with a view to quoting words or
repeating names, but that the misapprehension, whatever it was, may be so
admitted as not to leave me under an unmerited degree of discredit and
disgrace. Mr. ---- certainly never encouraged me to stand for Westminster,
but, on the contrary, advised me to support Lord Percy, which made me the
more mark at the time the fairness with which I thought he apprised me of
the preference my pretensions were likely to receive in Your Lordship's
consideration.

"Unquestionably Your Lordship's recollection of what passed between
Mr. ---- and yourself must be just; and were it no more than what you said
on the same subject to Lord Howick, I consider it as a mark of attention;
but what has astonished me is, that Mr. ---- should ever have informed
Your Lordship, as he admits he did, that I had no intention of offering
myself. This naturally must have put from your mind whatever degree of
disposition was there to have made a preferable application to me; and
Lord Howick's answer to your question, on which I have ventured to make a
friendly remonstrance, must have confirmed Mr. ----'s report. But allow me
to suppose that I had myself seen Your Lordship, and that you had
explicitly promised me the support of Government, and had afterwards sent
for me and informed me that it was at all an object to you that I should
give way to Lord Percy, I assure you, with the utmost sincerity, that I
should cheerfully have withdrawn myself, and applied every interest I
possessed as your Lordship should have directed.

"All I request is, that what passed between me and Mr. ---- may take an
intelligible shape before any common friend, or before Your Lordship.
This I conceive to be a preliminary due to my own honor, and what he
ought not to evade."

The Address which he delivered, at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, in
declining the offer of support which many of the electors still pressed
upon him, contains some of those touches of personal feeling which a
biographer is more particularly bound to preserve. In speaking of Mr.
Fox, he said,--

"It is true there have been occasions upon which I have differed with him
--painful recollections of the most painful moments of my political life!
Nor were there wanting those who endeavored to represent these
differences as a departure from the homage which his superior mind,
though unclaimed by him, was entitled to, and from the allegiance of
friendship which our hearts all swore to him. But never was the genuine
and confiding texture of his soul more manifest than on such occasions;
he knew that nothing on earth could detach me from him; and he resented
insinuations against the sincerity and integrity of a friend, which he
would not have noticed had they been pointed against himself. With such a
man to have battled in the cause of genuine liberty,--with such a man to
have struggled against the inroads of oppression and corruption,--with
such an example before me, to have to boast that I never in my life gave
one vote in Parliament that was not on the side of freedom, is the
congratulation that attends the retrospect of my public life. His
friendship was the pride and honor of my days. I never, for one moment,
regretted to share with him the difficulties, the calumnies, and
sometimes even the dangers, that attended an honorable course. And now,
reviewing my past political life, were the option possible that I should
retread the path. I solemnly and deliberately declare that I would prefer
to pursue the same course; to bear up under the same pressure; to abide
by the same principles; and remain by his side an exile from power,
distinction, and emolument, rather than be at this moment a splendid
example of successful servility or prosperous apostacy, though clothed
with power, honor, titles, gorged with sinecures, and lord of hoards
obtained from the plunder of the people."

At the conclusion of his Address he thus alludes, with evidently a deep
feeling of discontent, to the circumstances that had obliged him to
decline the honor now proposed to him:--

"Illiberal warnings have been held out, most unauthoritatively I know,
that by persevering in the present contest I may risk my official
situation, and if I retire, I am aware, that minds, as coarse and
illiberal, may assign the dread of that as my motive. To such
insinuations I shall scorn to make any other reply than a reference to
the whole of my past political career. I consider it as no boast to say,
that any one who has struggled through such a portion of life as I have,
without obtaining an office, is not likely to I abandon his principles to
retain one when acquired. If riches do not give independence, the
next-best thing to being very rich is to have been used to be very poor.
But independence is not allied to wealth, to birth, to rank, to power, to
titles, or to honor. Independence is in the mind of a man, or it is no
where. On this ground were I to decline the contest, should scorn the
imputation that should bring the purity of my purpose into doubt. No
Minister can expect to find in me a servile vassal. No Minister can
expect from me the abandonment of any principle I have avowed, or any
pledge I have given. I know not that I have hitherto shrunk in place from
opinions I have maintained while in opposition. Did there exist a
Minister of a different cast from any I know in being, were he to attempt
to exact from me a different conduct, my office should be at his service
tomorrow. Such a Minister might strip me of my situation, in some
respects of considerable emolument, but he could not strip me of the
proud conviction that I was right; he could not strip me of my own
self-esteem; he could not strip me, I think, of some portion of the
confidence and good opinion of the people. But I am noticing the
calumnious threat I allude to more than it deserves. There can be no
peril, I venture to assert, under the present Government, in the free
exercise of discretion, such as belongs to the present question. I
therefore disclaim the merit of putting anything to hazard. If I have
missed the opportunity of obtaining all the support I might, perhaps,
have had on the present occasion, from a very scrupulous delicacy, which
I think became and was incumbent upon me, but which I by no means
conceive to have been a fit rule for others, I cannot repent it. While
the slightest aspiration of breath passed those lips, now closed for
ever,--while one drop of life's blood beat in that heart, now cold for
ever,--I could not, I ought not, to have acted otherwise than I did.--I
now come with a very embarrassed feeling to that declaration which I yet
think you must have expected from me, but which I make with reluctance,
because, from the marked approbation I have experienced from you, I fear
that with reluctance you will receive it.--I feel myself under the
necessity of retiring from this contest."

About three weeks after, ensued the Dissolution of Parliament,--a
measure attended with considerable unpopularity to the Ministry, and
originating as much in the enmity of one of its members to Lord Sidmouth,
as the introduction of that noble Lord among them, at all, was owing to
the friendship of another. In consequence of this event, Lord Percy
having declined offering himself again, Mr. Sheridan became a candidate
for Westminster, and after a most riotous contest with a demagogue of the
moment, named Paul, was, together with Sir Samuel Hood, declared duly
elected.

The moderate measure in favor of the Roman Catholics, which the Ministry
now thought it due to the expectations of that body to bring forward,
was, as might be expected, taken advantage of by the King to rid himself
of their counsels, and produced one of those bursts of bigotry, by which
the people of England have so often disgraced themselves. It is sometimes
a misfortune to men of wit, that they put their opinions in a form to be
remembered. We might, perhaps, have been ignorant of the keen, but
worldly view which Mr. Sheridan, on this occasion, took of the hardihood
of his colleagues, if he had not himself expressed it in a form so
portable to the memory. "He had often," he said, "heard of people
knocking out their brains against a wall, but never before knew of any
one building a wall expressly for the purpose."

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